Philosophy

As Above So Below – The microcosm mirrors the macrocosm – society mirrors the economy

Ask yourself this question: Can you have a healthy/functional/sustainable society with an unhealthy/dysfunctional/unsustainable economic system and monetary dynamic? Seeing that society is largely the subset of the economy the answer is no.

Considering that the $USD (Federal Reserve notes) is the world reserve currency and many other economies incorporate it or pin their currencies to it the overall dynamic of the world economy will reflect the dynamics that the U.S. dollar incorporates. Given that the $USD is issued at interest it means there will always be more money owed than money in the system to pay it back and given that interest compounds over time when not paid back in full this factor will increase exponentially over time. There are only a few ways to pay back an exponentially increasing debt on a global economic scale: Increase the tax base (population), Increase the percentage taxed, or issue new money into the system to dilute the debt and kick the can down the road. All of which are unsustainable.

Given that there is always more debt in the system than money to pay it back it means that someone will ALWAYS be defaulting on their loans. As the interest compounds at an exponential rate it means that more and more people will feel the pressure of that interest (debt) and seek to acquire the money in whatever way they can to make their payments to avoid defaulting and losing ‘everything’. This pressure causes people to do ‘unethical’ or ‘immoral’ things to get the money because they begin to have few other options and as time goes on this mentality will ripple throughout society. Monetary scarcity and exponentially increasing debt causes people to act like starving animals fighting over the last scrap of meat trying to survive. This monetary dynamic causes societal behavior to become aggravated, vicious, greedy, violent, stressed, shallow, and desperate while giving socio and psychopaths a prime environment to thrive and become more abundant in due to selective pressures (morality and compassion are a weakness in an environment of scarcity). The worst part is that given enough time even if everyone plays nice and fairly the built in interest dynamic will causes all of the real assets to accumulate in the hands of the issuer of the debt. The entire system and its dynamics is lose-lose over the long term for all participants unless you are the issuer of the debt. Again, the dynamics of this system are fundamentally unsustainable.

So how do we fix society’s ills? We must construct and implement a monetary dynamic that is fundamentally generative instead of parasitic in nature; one that provides abundance instead of scarcity. In order to do this we need to base the money off of something that has real value and utility, is abundant, is sustainable over the long term, can be implemented by anyone, and has the potential to grow exponentially.

So what has these qualities and generative potential? Solar arrays that function at a positive ERoEI (Energy Returned on Energy Invested) allowing for a ‘solar breeder’ to be created (a solar panel production plant that runs entirely off of solar energy at a net positive ERoEI) while using net returned energy as money. The utilizable sunlight hitting the Earth’s surface is more than abundant – it just needs to be harnessed as it provides many hundreds of times the global energy demand. If we model the foundation of our economic system (sunlight -> solar panels -> abundant energy/money) after our ecological system that provides caloric abundance (sunlight -> plants photosynthesizing -> abundant caloric energy) then we can have a generative system of relative abundance – at least enough to ‘feed’ the energy demand of humans on a global scale.

By changing the dynamic of the economy (above) we can change the dynamics of society (below) which largely mirror it. With abundant energy we can focus our human efforts on cooperation, collaboration, and moral development instead of selfish competition based on artificial (relative) scarcity.